“We just ate!”
“Dinner won’t be for hours!”
“I don’t want to wait!”
Twelve cousins registered twelve different protests, all at once.
“The weather will be warmer after dinner,” Aunty Violet proclaimed as though that decided everything.Which Jewel supposed was the case, since Violet was in charge.“We’ll eat at noon, and then we’ll skate afterwards.”
“Noon isn’t even two hours from now,” her eldest, Nicolas, pointed out.“Our breakfast was too late.We ought to skip dinner.”
“We are not skipping anything,” Violet said, looking no less determined.“Not after Hilda went to so much trouble procuring supplies and making plans.So we’ll eat light, which is best before skating anyway.”
“And also because we need to save room for our big Christmas Eve supper tonight,” Aunty Cait put in.“With plum pudding.”She rubbed her hands together.“Kendra, you must be looking forward to plum pudding.”
Jewel looked to see what Aunty Kendra had to say to that, but she and Uncle Trick had apparently slipped from the room when she wasn’t watching.
To go wrap gifts?
Somehow, she thought not.
First Papa skipped out on breakfast, and now Aunty Kendra and Uncle Trick had vanished as well.Were the two disappearances connected?
A very interesting puzzle.
Eighteen
Kendra
“HURRY,” KENDRAsaid as she and Trick rushed up the cottage’s staircase.“I intend to be in bed with you before anyone else steps foot in this building.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, sidling past her to hurry down the corridor.He reached for the door latch.
BANG!
Kendra stopped so abruptly she nearly ran into him.
“Sweet Mary!”he breathed.
They both stared at their bedchamber’s door.
Which was flat on their bedchamber’s floor.
Trick blinked, looking bewildered.“What the devil happened to the pins that go in the hinges?”
“I cannot imagine.”Kendra felt as if all the air had quite suddenly been sucked out of her.“They’re just…gone.”She looked up at him quizzically.“How can they have disappeared?”
Trick went inside, stepping on the fallen door and pulling her in after him.“I don’t know, and right now I don’t care.”He lifted the door and set it back in place, carefully aligning the empty knuckles of the hinges.“It matters not,” he said, moving her toward the bed, a lascivious gleam in his eyes.“We cannot allow”—a knock came at the door, immediately followed by another—
BANG!
“Your grace?”Margaret stepped onto the floored-again door, looking bemused.“My apologies, your graces.I heard a loud noise, and came to—”
“We could have been standing there!”Kendra cried.“Right where that door fell!You could have killed us!”
“She didn’t,” Trick told her succinctly before turning to Margaret.“What the devil happened to the pins that go in the hinges?”
“The pins?”She looked to the doorframe, then down to the edge of the door.“Lud.I—I don’t know.”
